Living and Dying for the Plural: Transformations of Queer Iberian Cinema

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on queer Spanish and Portuguese films produced in the wake of the decades-long dictatorships both countries faced until the mid 1970s. More specifically, it attends to the particular ways in which film reveals how queer identity is informed by the geographic space of Iberia. The focus is on queer subjects who find themselves at the periphery of cultural narratives dominated by discussions of “normalcy” and who are further isolated by the strictures of government that limit understandings of national, regional, and personal identity. My dissertation introduces the concept of “heteronymativity,” which explains how marginalized figures on Iberia’s geographic and sexual periphery implode the unitary and centrist notions of identity and place espoused by dominant modes of political and social discourse. Situated within the field of Iberian Studies, this project includes analysis of Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues’s film Morrer Como Um Homem (2009); Catalan director Ventura Pons’s documentary Ocaña: Retrat Interimitent (1978); and Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s films, Los Amantes Pasajeros (2013), Todo Sobre Mi Madre (1999), and Kika (1993).